Scientists Just Heard the Sound of Two Black Holes Colliding

It confirmed one of Albert Einstein's oldest theories.

In high school, almost everyone learns about Nicolaus Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Albert Einstein. From arguing that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa, to dropping things off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show how gravity works, these scientists changed how we see our universe, and by extension, how we see ourselves in it. But while most of these breakthroughs happened hundreds of years ago, astrophysicists are still making discoveries today. According to The New York Times, “an energy 50 times greater than that of all the stars in the universe put together,” caused a vibrational chirp at two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) sites on September 14th, 2015. Why is this important? Because it confirms one of Albert Einstein’s few unproven theories of the universe, or as The Times puts it, taps "into the deepest register of physical reality."

Between 1915 and 1940, Einstein explored the idea of gravitational waves, which are ripples in the universe caused by colliding black holes. He published four papers that theoretically disproved, proved, disproved again, and re-proved their existence. But now, thanks to LIGO’s “chirp” heard 'round the scientific community, scientists have physical proof that they exist. Over a billion years ago, two black holes collided that “distorted space and time” and created a massive black hole 62 times the mass of the Sun. The universe is still feeling the aftershock of this collision, and in September, when the waves rippled past our planet, LIGO caught them on tape, which you can hear for yourself here.

“I think this will be one of the major breakthroughs in physics for a long time,” Szabolcs Marka, a Columbia University professor and LIGO scientist, told the The Times. The discovery is a victory not only for the scientists involved, but also for the National Science Foundation which has poured over a billion dollars into gravitational wave research over the past 40 years.

“Until now, we scientists have only seen warped space-time when it’s calm,” Dr. Kip Thorne, a leading researcher on the project and Caltech black hole theorist, told The Times. “It’s as though we had only seen the ocean’s surface on a calm day but had never seen it roiled in a storm, with crashing waves.”